The Los Angeles Times has announced that the newspaper will no longer print letters that deny the reality of climate change.

To some, this is a curb on freedom of speech. “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ...” Newspapers, however, are not governments. They do not have to print every letter they receive. Most newspapers endeavor to publish a variety of opinions, even when the letters disagree with the stand of their editorial board.

However, opinions are not the same as facts. And the Earth is warming. NASA cites two facts regarding Earth’s climate as “indisputable.” One is that “the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century” and that increased levels of greenhouse gases cause the Earth to warm. The other fact is that “the Earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth’s orbit and in greenhouse gas levels.”

NASA, among other evidence, points out that the global sea level rose almost seven inches in the last century, but the rate of sea level rise annually in the last decade has been nearly double what it was in the last century.

There are still deniers, such as the late Michael Crichton, grasping at straws. Peter Doran, the author of an Antarctica research paper, stated that “our results have been misused as ‘evidence’ against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel ‘State of Fear’.... Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals — thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals — all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?”

In other words, the partial destruction of the ozone layer, caused by man-made chemicals, was causing some cooling in Antarctica.

James Hansen, professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia and recent head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, declared, “We cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without handing our children, grandchildren and future generations a situation that is out of their control, with enormous consequences for their well-being and for the very existence of many of the other species on our planet.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which includes the world’s top climate scientists, recently announced that it was 95 percent certain that fossil fuel-burning humans are driving global warming.

Page 2 of 2 - The Los Angeles Times is recognizing scientific fact and refusing to mislead the public. Paul Thornton, letters editor, addressed criticism of the paper’s new policy: “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying ‘there’s no sign humans have caused climate change’ is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”

Climate change deniers are ignorant people, corporations and their paid shills, fossil fuel lobbyists and the Tea Party. We applaud the Los Angeles Times for their courageous stand.